> The sweet number is somewhere around 6 to 8 people in an average high-speed connection.
Based on mesh architecture WebRTC, so unfortunately not really an option for anything but small calls. WebRTC is fun, but in the end, someone has to do the encoding, and w/ mesh, the client pays the price.
The issue isn't really encoding but bandwidth, specifically upload bandwidth (due to needing to send your own stream to all n-1 other participants rather than just one SFU, which then fans out to n streams).
Many popular group video call solutions are end-to-end encrypted these days, so there isn't any re-encoding happening.
6 to 8 people is a lot even without using Star-Configuration WebRTC. For example, how many people do you talk to at once face to face in real life in an average group? 4 to 6 people calls its like the size of a normal table at a restaurant. It is the typical group conversation. You could argue large group calls become more and more unnatural after 8 total people.
Based on mesh architecture WebRTC, so unfortunately not really an option for anything but small calls. WebRTC is fun, but in the end, someone has to do the encoding, and w/ mesh, the client pays the price.